Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
A Pennsylvania couple who believes in the power of prayer to heal all illnesses–and refuses all forms of modern medical treatment–may be facing charges after their 8-month-old son died last week. In 2009, Herbert and Catherine Schaible’s 2-year-old son died, an incident that resulted in the couple being sentenced to 10 years probation. More from NBC News:
Authorities have yet to file criminal charges in the death of the child last week, after he suffered with diarrhea and breathing problems for days. But charges could be filed once authorities pinpoint how the boy died. An official cause of death is pending an autopsy, according to police.
The child was taken to a funeral home by an as yet unknown individual and the undertaker alerted police, Russell said.
In 2010, a jury convicted the Schaibles, who have seven other children, of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment in Kent’s death from pneumonia. The Schaibles were sentenced to probation over prison time.
As part of their sentence, the Schaibles were required to arrange medical examinations for each of their children, to immediately consult with a doctor when a child became sick and to follow the doctor’s treatment recommendations.
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013
Telling children to “clean their plates” or finish all of their food at any given meal is associated with a higher risk of obesity later in life by a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics. More from CNN.com:
Denying certain foods to children or pressuring them to eat every bit of a meal are common practices among many parents. But researchers at the University of Minnesota found parents who restricted foods were more likely to have overweight or obese children. And while those who pressured children to eat all of their meals mostly had children of normal weight, it adversely affected the way those children ate as they grew older, according to the study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Investigators combined data from two separate research studies. The first, EAT 2010 (Eating and Activity in Teens), studied around 2,800 middle and high school students from public schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Participants in the project responded to survey questionnaires designed to examine dietary intake and weight status.
Researchers combined that data with information from the Project F-EAT (Families and Eating and Activity Among Teens), a study designed to examine factors within the family environment on weight in adolescents.
From the combined information, researchers were able to gain a better understanding of how parents’ approach to food and feeding is related to adolescents’ weight. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity now affects 17% of all children and adolescents in the United States – triple the rate from just a generation ago.
“We found that between 50 and 60% of parents from our sample reported requiring that their child eat all of the food on their plate at a meal,” said researcher Katie Loth, the study’s lead author. “Further, we found that between 30-40% of parents from within our sample reported encouraging their child to continue eating even after their child stated that they were full.
“While these pressure-to-eat behaviors were more frequent among parents of non-overweight adolescents, they were still endorsed quite frequently by parents of overweight and obese adolescents, indicating that many parents endorse these behaviors regardless of their child’s current weight status,” she said.
Image: Child eating, via Shutterstock
Thursday, April 18th, 2013
The new health care rules initially seemed to apply differently to children who were part of the foster care system past the age of 18, but provisions that are coming into effect next year will change that, enabling former foster kids to be covered the same way as other young adults. More from CNN:
While many young adults are now covered by the Affordable Care Act, able to remain on their parents’ insurance until age 26, the rules are different for those like [22-year-old Nathan] Cox-Reed, who grew up in the foster care system.
There are more than 400,000 children in foster care in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said last year. All are provided with health care coverage as long as they are wards of the state.
When foster kids turn 18, they age out of the system and instantly lose their coverage.
That’s about to change, when another part of Obamacare takes effect on January 1, 2014. Medicaid coverage will be extended for former foster youth until they reach 26, as long as the individual was in foster care and enrolled in Medicaid until the age of 18.
“I definitely think it would be a big relief, and I would definitely feel more secure as far as my health goes,” Cox-Reed said.
But there’s a catch. Cox-Reed has dreams of traveling across the nation and becoming a filmmaker. A future relocation could jeopardize his medical coverage.
States will only be required to keep former foster children on Medicaid if they continue to reside in the state where they were in foster care originally.
This part of the provision is “an incredibly troubling aspect,” said Washington attorney Brooke Lehmann, who founded the child and family advocacy group Childworks. Young adults can be highly mobile as they move for educational purposes, job opportunities and a host of other reasons, she said.
“You can’t be on a film set if you are uninsured,” Cox-Reed said. “You could get hurt. I definitely think [being uninsured] is limiting and it’s a letdown, because what if I do get a job out of state? I might not be able to take it.”
While “it’s a great provision,” said Joan Alker, co-executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and a professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, limiting extended Medicaid enrollment because of relocation could threaten the provision’s effectiveness.
Image: Teenager at doctor’s office, via Shutterstock
Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
E. coli and salmonella are feared and avoided by families everywhere, who take great pains to make sure their kitchens are clean, and that food is safely stored and prepared. But a new study reveals some surprising spots–like refrigerator water dispensers–where germs lurk in disturbing concentrations. From The New York Times:
The report found that some of the areas people considered most likely to be contaminated, like microwave keypads, were not, while some they had never thought of, like refrigerator water dispensers and the rubber gasket on most blenders, were among the worst.
The findings suggest that many people who try to keep a tidy kitchen may be overlooking some of the more problematic areas, said Lisa Yakas, a microbiologist with NSF International, a nonprofit public health group that published the report. The goal of the study, Ms. Yakas said, was not to frighten the public, but to provide some insight on the best ways to reduce the spread of food-borne illness in the kitchen.
“What we really wanted to do was to just make them more aware of these places that they might not have even thought of,” Ms. Yakas said.
Research suggests that the kitchen is a particularly important place to practice good hygiene. Nearly 10 million cases of food poisoning occur in the United States every year, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five outbreaks of food-borne illness are caused by food that people eat in their homes. Leafy vegetables and other plants are responsible for more than half of all cases, and about a third of all the fatal cases are caused by contaminated poultry.
Most healthy adults can fight off such infections. But the elderly, the very young and people who are pregnant or have compromised immune systems have a higher risk of complications.
“Any one of these populations could be represented in your home at some time, so it’s important to protect them,” Ms. Yakas said. “As a mom with two little kids at home, it’s something that I worry about.”
For the new study, the researchers took swabs of a variety of common kitchen items in the homes of 20 families living in the suburbs of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich. They also asked people in the homes to rate the items that they thought were most likely to be contaminated and most in need of regular cleaning.
The microwave keypad was the area they considered the dirtiest. But it was not. Instead, the researchers found that refrigerator ice and water dispensers, spatulas, blender gaskets – the rubber seal at the base of the blender that helps prevent leaks – and refrigerator meat and vegetable compartments had the highest germ counts.
Water and ice dispensers, which provide moist environments that can breed micro-organisms, were often found to contain yeast and mold. That can be a particular hazard for people with allergies.
Image: Refrigerator water dispenser, via Shutterstock
Thursday, April 11th, 2013
A new research study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology has found that intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are safe and effective for teenage girls. The findings are based on analysis of more than 90,000 women who used the contraceptive device. More from Reuters:
Researchers found less than 1 percent of all women developed serious complications from the devices, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, regardless of their age.
And teens were only slightly more likely than older women to lose their periods or become pregnant while using an intrauterine device (IUD), according to findings published in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
“It shows exactly what many of us have thought all along, that IUDs are great options for teens,” said James Trussell, who studies birth control methods at Princeton University in New Jersey.
IUDs include the hormone-releasing Mirena, which can prevent pregnancy for five years, and a copper version, sold as ParaGard, which is effective for 10 years. The devices cost a few hundred dollars each, not including doctors’ charges for inserting them.
Evidence has been mounting that new IUDs are safe and effective in preventing pregnancy. But some doctors have been difficult to convince since an older and badly-designed version of the IUD, the Dalkon Shield, caused serious infections and even deaths in the 1970s.
In guidelines published last year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said IUDs and contraceptive implants should now be considered one of the best birth control options for teens because they are reliable and reversible.
Image: Teenage girl and her doctor, via Shutterstock
